Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

Yeah I quite liked her at first but she's grating on me a bit now.

How young were Adric and Nyssa supposed to be? They always read to me as older than teenagers.

there was a post on tumblr today that said something like "i just realised that before on doctor who we saw the doctor through the eyes of the companion and now we're seeing the companion through the eyes of the doctor" and i feel like that's... not too far off? but in effect all that happens is that the character of Clara is super slight and you have no sense that she has an internal life. even the ~mystery~ about her is completely external.
(also, i feel like one doesn't watch doctor who through the eyes of the doctor because that would kind of ruin the show)

yes! and therefore we're watching the doctor through the eyes of an everyperson who isn't present, which is probably another reason he's really grating on me atm

he works because there's always an alice around to react to him, but this year there's clara

Adric was 14 or 15 - Nyssa in her late teens iirc, but mature in behaviour due to her courtly upbringing

(John & Gillian I think are both under 10, and Gareth Jenkins was 8, before being erased from history before our eyes, by a crack in the BBC)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b5/A_Fix_with_Sontarans.jpg

Clara's best outing to date has been the Ice Warrior story; that's the one that made her most feel like a distinct person from the other nu-Who companions

I like that, so far, the show has been diegetically telling the Doctor that he is wrong about Clara being mysterious and amazing -- as if it's scolding him / Moffatt for going so quickly, so repetitively, to the same well without actually earning it.

also, Clara is so far pretty freakin boring for someone who's supposed to be such an unkillable mystery

"Note: Clara died on her way back to her home planet"

Dan: There is a sizable number of fans who love The Idiot's Lantern but they all seem to be wacko Ten/Rose shippers.

I like comedy Sontaran, he's probably the thing I enjoyed most out of that episode. Also I am 5 years old.

I dunno, I just feel like of all the seasons so far this one is the most rudderless in terms of story. I mean, there's a handwavey nod to the 'conundrum of Clara' every now and then but it's like, every week new adventure without much of a thread running through anything at all really.

And I'm getting really bothered by how flirty the Doctor and Clara are now. Like it was a bit that way with Pond, but now it's just AGGGH would you STOP

it's like, every week new adventure without much of a thread running through anything at all really.

I don't have a problem with this. I wish the adventures were better though.

ordinarily it wouldn't bother me, I think I just am liking Clara and the doctor less and less as a pair so I'm almost to the point of not caring where they'll go next

there's no chemistry between those two, mainly because they're not really doing anything together but i suspect the actors are not really cliquing

yes! and therefore we're watching the doctor through the eyes of an everyperson who isn't present, which is probably another reason he's really grating on me atm

Yeah, this otm -- that's why I'm missing Rory (rather than Amy) this season. Smith is still great but he needs a Xander/Arthur Dent/underwhelmist companion more than a perky-zinger type

Also yes Clara barely gets any dialogue with Smith anyway, so no time to register besides her guilt-trapping "I'd rather be on BBC2" actor face

but it's like, every week new adventure without much of a thread running through anything at all really.

This was announced in advance as a plan, hence the distinct tone & genre exercise swings, and the terrible CGI "movie posters" every week. Unfortunately they're being hobbled by the actual continuing threads of, first, the badly-fumbled Pond departure, and now the audienceDGAF mystery of Clara

otm

also the lack of ~cleverness~ arcs means the episodes need to be a bit more various in tone than they are

That was awful

I think because if you were summing up 'Doctor Who', you might use the following adjectives:

*Weird
*Eccentric
*Dark
*Child-like

And if you were summing up 'Neil Gaiman', you might use:

*Weird
*Eccentric
*Dark
*Child-like

But you'd mean something very, very different, despite using exactly the same words. And rather like how you could call both P.G. Wodehouse and Max Beerbohm 'witty', but really, there's a gulf between them, whatever the charms of the weaker one, well, it's like that with Dr Who and Neil Gaiman, probably, I don't know

(Where Who = Beerbohm and Gaiman = Wodehouse)

I've missed most of this season, though I'm not sure that's much of a bad thing with the hit:miss ratio. That one, eh, I didn't *hate* it, but it was pretty boring. And despite liking Clara at first, she's not emerging as any strong character, and ugh, have they been doing the 'sexy doctor' schtick again? Even if it's more of a Donna-Doctor thing where they repeatedly went "oh no, we're not like that", why do they even have to mention it? FFS people, it is possible to have a friendship with a member of the opposite sex without having to CONSTANTLY reaffirm where your sexual relationship is at.

Yeah this was pretty lame tbh. Not as bad as some of the other episodes in the series (ugh, the one with the all the singing!) but nevertheless. This whole plan of running every episode as a stand-alone story has really bitten them in the arse, huh? They've basically engineered a situation (for no good or obvious reason) where they have to come up with twice as many ideas and then have half the time to tell the story.

Is it any wonder that there's no chemistry between Clara and the Doctor? They have 45 minutes to introduce a scenario, develop the plot a bit and then resolve everything ready for next week. And after that, if we're lucky, we get chucked 3 or 4 cryptic sentences as a means of developing the overall plot or 'arc' or whatever as a bonus. Do they really have so little faith in the kids of today to follow a story that runs for multiple weeks?

I've been a pretty big supporter of Nu-Who so far, but I'm coming round to the POV that says that it's time for a change, of showrunner if not of protagonist. I like Smith a lot, but this series has basically been dross and I don't think I'm going to remember a single episode of it in a year or two. The Journey to the Centre of the Tardis as a concept is such a massive missed opportunity for the show.

Bleh. I hope next week ends on a BIG cliffhanger to set up for the 50th Anniversary, which I'm still feeling ought to be something special.

yeah I agree with most of what you've said there Windsor, v otm.

the constant stream of stand-alone adventures is driving me UP THE WALL. and flirty/sexy clara and the doctor is annoying the shit out of me. tight skirts now? FUCK OFF. and..AND! idk how anyone else feels about the cybermen but I have in the past found them somewhat creepy but re-engineering the threat so that they're now basically just Borg was a really stupid idea. part of the scary thing about them was seeing the people in the cybermen factories getting tortured, and now you just have stupid metal sperm things and who cares about that seriously.

oh AND Matt Smith (who I still mostly like) was really kind of terrible at playing the two versions of himself. when he first started doing it I didn't even really get it. It was like watching a bad Jim Carrey impersonation.

he was all bumbling clown again rite

I think he showed the full range of his panto abilities!

Actually, right, I like the tone that he hit for the first half of the show, slightly overplayed but generally a distraction for serious focus - but then my favourite Doctor is McCoy.

idk how anyone else feels about the cybermen but I have in the past found them somewhat creepy but re-engineering the threat so that they're now basically just Borg was a really stupid idea.

this was by far the least shit the Cybermen have been since colour (not counting The Pandorica Opens)

I had high hopes for this since I loved The Doctor's Wife, but this was annoying as an Amanda Palmer TED talk.

The guy who's Ian Levine to Gaiman's Eric Saward has spilled the beans about all the parts that were deleted. Nothing revolutionary - scene setting for the kids in the main, which is why they were shoehorned into The Crimson Horror - but the big reveal is that they were only in it at all on Moffatt's insistence because his plan for the whole series (and why they're single stories) was wacky family hijinks starring Clara's Victorian family. Then he changed his mind once scripts were finished and turned in (this one at least) and had them use modern Clara instead and drop the kids. Presumably there was some undisclosed dick waving between SM and NG about backing down and NG won.

Presumably Gaiman's a professional writer doing a contract job.

Presumably his explicit denial during the week he's replacing Moffatt was just to stop internet rumours.

Presumably his explicit denial was because he'd said to a dude on an international phoner that he absolutely would never take over the job of showrunner, but specifically as long as Moffatt is running it, he'd write another episode if asked; that the journo in question had misunderstood Gaiman, and quoted him onstage at the first Splendid Chaps MICF show as "effectively saying 'oh hells yes!'" to the showrunner question; that after the combined podcast episode went up 16 days later (on the 23rd of April) people started tweeting him saying "I herd u said you wood take over Dr Who will u make the Dr a woman????!?!"; and having never said to anyone that he would take over as showrunner, he bemusedly, if explicitly, denied that he was replacing Moffatt as showrunner.

Exactly.

wacky family hijinks starring Clara's Victorian family

Much as I'm not a fan of this sort of stuff, at least it would be something coherent.

Anyway, the finale is out in the wild - BBC America fucked up with people who had pre-ordered the S7 Part 2 blu-ray and they got it yesterday so have seen The Name Of The Doctor.

In other words, any spoilers you read in the next 7 days are entirely probably right.

emil.y and veg otm re the stupid Doctor/Clara tight skirt boyfriend shit that is dominating every fracking moment of this show now and was bad enough even when it wasn't

I liked the slow start -- the first half of this felt like the best episode of the season by miles. But after Smith got Borg'd it turned into the usual over-paced cobblers. The coda with Willow was so under-written it felt actively odd.

I wanted more menacing kids tbh

Also it's weird to me how much the show is pushing the romance with the Doctor and Clara. It's been all tell and no show, as they haven't had that many scenes together and very little chemistry. Clara and Warwick Davis made more sense than Clara and the Doctor ffs.

Anyway, the finale is out in the wild

oh thank christ

Also it's weird to me how much the show is pushing the romance with the Doctor and Clara.

i've started to think it's just the showrunners thinking she is so pretty that it would be implausible for them not to be constantly referring to the fact that they could be in a relationship.

I found myself in the weird position of wanting more of the jim carrey manic gurning from smith just because the ~inside the doctor's mind~ stuff was so embarrassing and cheap-looking -- especially as it was the kind of image that i could imagine working in a comic where it didn't have to be quite so photorealistic but could be blurry and weird.

I sadly found that to be a complete shambles, almost as bad as the final Tenant 2-parter, and can't believe it was the same writer as The Doctor's Wife (I'm no big Gaiman fan, at least of his work of the last ~15 yrs, but Wife was great I thought). And why does becoming Cyber Controller, ie the big chief enotionless leader (who even taunts the Dr about having emotions) make you into the Joker, obviously relishing your own evil, and full of emotional volatility.

This 50th year ought to have been really special, but instead we get a half-length, half-arsed series.

Did like the new Cybermen, their voices and their creepy shoulder movements. Pity they were mostly wasted in the story.

I didn't like Wife either. Mainly because I don't tend to think of the Tardis as some kind of Helena Bonham-Carter lite kook.

The graphics in that bit looked like a shoddy Dave McKean rip-off.

I think the Doctor's Manichean struggle with the cyber planner was a good idea - reminded me of the old school battles of the wits/wills between the Doctor and a baddie, and the chess game in particular was surely a ref to Curse of Fenrick - but it was so rushed and with all the other stuff going on around it that it just became incoherent.

Those kids were super annoying. I wonder if Gaiman was annoyed at having to include them so to spite Moffat he made the girl a mardy know-it-all and the boy generally useless. Total contrast to the likeable and well-written kids in Sarah Jane Adventures.

not a Fenric riff, but Gaiman was happy to hear of the connection

And why does becoming Cyber Controller, ie the big chief enotionless leader (who even taunts the Dr about having emotions) make you into the Joker

a) CyberPlanner is high on SmithDoctor's emotions and mentalness at this point, would presumably settle into more controlled cyberness once he took over properly

b) it has 100% been a feature of the Cybermen since the series went into colour that they are emotional bitches that just rant on about emotions, especially gloating about not having them

The chess game and the cyberman playing it is obviously the Turk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

Which was previously used, played by a cyberman, in the Eighth Doctor audio The Silver Turk written by Marc Platt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Turk

That Neil Gaiman, eh? Full of original ideas.

I thought the use of a midget controlling a bigger device might also have been a callback to he Peking Homunculus in Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Given this was episode 6 I didn't spot the Colin reference. Anybody else?